The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy

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What is the meaning of it?

It is not possible to say that all these people who have provoked
or aided or allowed this deed are such worthless creatures that,
knowing all the infamy of what they are doing, they do it against
their principles, some for pay and for profit, others through fear
of punishment. All of them in certain circumstances know how to
stand up for their principles. Not one of these officials would
steal a purse, read another man's letter, or put up with an
affront without demanding satisfaction. Not one of these officers
would consent to cheat at cards, would refuse to pay a debt of
honor, would betray a comrade, run away on the field of battle, or
desert the flag. Not one of these soldiers would spit out the
holy sacrament or eat meat on Good Friday. All these men are
ready to face any kind of privation, suffering, or danger rather
than consent to do what they regard as wrong. They have therefore
the strength to resist doing what is against their principles.

It is even less possible to assert that all these men are such
brutes that it is natural and not distasteful to them to do such
deeds. One need only talk to these people a little to see that
all of them, the landowner even, and the judge, and the minister
and the Tzar and the government, the officers and the soldiers,
not only disapprove of such things in the depth of their soul, but
suffer from the consciousness of their participation in them when
they recollect what they imply. But they try not to think about
it.

One need only talk to any of these who are taking part in the
affair from the landowner to the lowest policeman or soldier to
see that in the depth of their soul they all know it is a wicked
thing, that it would be better to have nothing to do with it, and
are suffering from the knowledge.

A lady of liberal views, who was traveling in the same train with
us, seeing the governor and the officers in the first-class saloon
and learning the object of the expedition, began, intentionally
raising her voice so that they should hear, to abuse the existing
order of things and to cry shame on men who would take part in
such proceedings. Everyone felt awkward, none knew where to look,
but no one contradicted her. They tried to look as though such
remarks were not worth answering. But one could see by their
faces and their averted eyes that they were ashamed. I noticed
the same thing in the soldiers. They too knew that what they were
sent to do was a shameful thing, but they did not want to think
about what was before them.

When the wood merchant, as I suspect insincerely only to show that
he was a man of education, began to speak of the necessity of such
measures, the soldiers who heard him all turned away from him,
scowling and pretending not to hear.

All the men who, like the landowner, the commissioner, the
minister, and the Tzar, were responsible for the perpetration of
this act, as well as those who were now going to execute it, and
even those who were mere spectators of it, knew that it was a
wickedness, and were ashamed of taking any share in it, and even
of being present at it.

Then why did they do it, or allow it to be done?

Ask them the question. And the landowner who started the affair,
and the judge who pronounced a clearly unjust even though formally
legal decision, and those who commanded the execution of the
decision, and those who, like the policemen, soldiers, and
peasants, will execute the deed with their own hands, flogging and
killing their brothers, all who have devised, abetted, decreed,
executed, or allowed such crimes, will make substantially the same
reply.

The authorities, those who have started, devised, and decreed the
matter, will say that such acts are necessary for the maintenance
of the existing order; the maintenance of the existing order is
necessary for the welfare of the country and of humanity, for the
possibility of social existence and human progress.

Men of the poorer class, peasants and soldiers, who will have to
execute the deed of violence with their own hands, say that they
do so because it is the command of their superior authority, and
the superior authority knows what he is about. That those are in
authority who ought to be in authority, and that they know what
they are doing appears to them a truth of which there can be no
doubt. If they could admit the possibility of mistake or error,
it would only be in functionaries of a lower grade; the highest
authority on which all the rest depends seems to them immaculate
beyond suspicion.

Though expressing the motives of their conduct differently, both
those in command and their subordinates are agreed in saying that
they act thus because the existing order is the order which must
and ought to exist at the present time, and that therefore to
support it is the sacred duty of every man.

On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore immutability of
the existing order, all who take part in acts of violence on the
part of government base the argument always advanced in their
justification. "Since the existing order is immutable," they say,
"the refusal of a single individual to perform the duties laid
upon him will effect no change in things, and will only mean that
some other man will be put in his place who may do the work worse,
that is to say, more cruelly, to the still greater injury of the
victims of the act of violence."

This conviction that the existing order is the necessary and
therefore immutable order, which it is a sacred duty for every man
to support, enables good men, of high principles in private life,
to take part with conscience more or less untroubled in crimes
such as that perpetrated in Orel, and that which the men in the
Toula train were going to perpetrate.

But what is this conviction based on? It is easy to understand
that the landowner prefers to believe that the existing order is
inevitable and immutable, because this existing order secures him
an income from his hundreds and thousands of acres, by means of
which he can lead his habitual indolent and luxurious life.

It is easy to understand that the judge readily believes in the
necessity of an order of things through which he receives a wage
fifty times as great as the most industrious laborer can earn, and
the same applies to all the higher officials. It is only under
the existing REGIME that as governor, prosecutor, senator, members
of the various councils, they can receive their several thousands
of rubles a year, without which they and their families would at
once sink into ruin, since if it were not for the position they
occupy they would never by their own abilities, industry, or
acquirements get a thousandth part of their salaries. The
minister, the Tzar, and all the higher authorities are in the same
position. The only distinction is that the higher and the more
exceptional their position, the more necessary it is for them to
believe that the existing order is the only possible order of
things. For without it they would not only be unable to gain an
equal position, but would be found to fall lower than all other
people. A man who has of his own free will entered the police
force at a wage of ten rubles, which he could easily earn in any
other position, is hardly dependent on the preservation of the
existing REGIME, and so he may not believe in its immutability.
But a king or an emperor, who receives millions for his post, and
knows that there are thousands of people round him who would like
to dethrone him and take his place, who knows that he will never
receive such a revenue or so much honor in any other position, who
knows, in most cases through his more or less despotic rule, that
if he were dethroned he would have to answer for all his abuse of
power--he cannot but believe in the necessity and even sacredness
of the existing order. The higher and the more profitable a man's
position, the more unstable it becomes, and the more terrible and
dangerous a fall from it for him, the more firmly the man believes
in the existing order, and therefore with the more ease of
conscience can such a man perpetrate cruel and wicked acts, as
though they were not in his own interest, but for the maintenance
of that order.

This is the case with all men in authority, who occupy positions
more profitable than they could occupy except for the present
REGIME, from the lowest police officer to the Tzar. All of them
are more or less convinced that the existing order is immutable,
because--the chief consideration--it is to their advantage. But
the peasants, the soldiers, who are at the bottom of the social
scale, who have no kind of advantage from the existing order, who
are in the very lowest position of subjection and humiliation,
what forces them to believe that the existing order in which they
are in their humble and disadvantageous position is the order
which ought to exist, and which they ought to support even at the
cost of evil actions contrary to their conscience?

What forces these men to the false reasoning that the existing
order is unchanging, and that therefore they ought to support it,
when it is so obvious, on the contrary, that it is only unchanging
because they themselves support it?

What forces these peasants, taken only yesterday from the plow and
dressed in ugly and unseemly costumes with blue collars and gilt
buttons, to go with guns and sabers and murder their famishing
fathers and brothers? They gain no kind of advantage and can be
in no fear of losing the position they occupy, because it is worse
than that from which they have been taken.

The persons in authority of the higher orders--landowners,
merchants, judges, senators, governors, ministers, tzars, and
officers--take part in such doings because the existing order is
to their advantage. In other respects they are often good and
kind-hearted men, and they are more able to take part in such
doings because their share in them is limited to suggestions,
decisions, and orders. These persons in authority never do
themselves what they suggest, decide, or command to be done. For
the most part they do not even see how all the atrocious deeds
they have suggested and authorized are carried out. But the
unfortunate men of the lower orders, who gain no kind of advantage
from the existing REGIME, but, on the contrary, are treated with
the utmost contempt, support it even by dragging people with their
own hands from their families, handcuffing them, throwing them in
prison, guarding them, shooting them.

Why do they do it? What forces them to believe that the existing
order is unchanging and they must support it?

All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating, the
handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their own
hands. If there were no soldiers or armed policemen, ready to
kill or outrage anyone as they are ordered, not one of those
people who sign sentences of death, imprisonment, or galley-
slavery for life would make up his mind to hang, imprison, or
torture a thousandth part of those whom, quietly sitting in his
study, he now orders to be tortured in all kinds of ways, simply
because he does not see it nor do it himself, but only gets it
done at a distance by these servile tools.

All the acts of injustice and cruelty which are committed in the
ordinary course of daily life have only become habitual because
there are these men always ready to carry out such acts of
injustice and cruelty. If it were not for them, far from anyone
using violence against the immense masses who are now ill-treated,
those who now command their punishment would not venture to
sentence them, would not even dare to dream of the sentences they
decree with such easy confidence at present. And if it were not
for these men, ready to kill or torture anyone at their
commander's will, no one would dare to claim, as all the idle
landowners claim with such assurance, that a piece of land,
surrounded by peasants, who are in wretchedness from want of land,
is the property of a man who does not cultivate it, or that stores
of corn taken by swindling from the peasants ought to remain
untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger because the
merchants must make their profit. If it were not for these
servile instruments at the disposal of the authorities, it could
never have entered the head of the landowner to rob the peasants
of the forest they had tended, nor of the officials to think they
are entitled to their salaries, taken from the famishing people,
the price of their oppression; least of all could anyone dream of
killing or exiling men for exposing falsehood and telling the
truth. All this can only be done because the authorities are
confidently assured that they have always these servile tools at
hand, ready to carry all their demands into effect by means of
torture and murder.

All the deeds of violence of tyrants from Napoleon to the lowest
commander of a company who fires upon a crowd, can only be
explained by the intoxicating effect of their absolute power over
these slaves. All force, therefore, rests on these men, who carry
out the deeds of violence with their own hands, the men who serve
in the police or the army, especially the army, for the police
only venture to do their work because the army is at their back.

What, then, has brought these masses of honest men, on whom the
whole thing depends, who gain nothing by it, and who have to do
these atrocious deeds with their own hands, what has brought them
to accept the amazing delusion that the existing order,
unprofitable, ruinous, and fatal as it is for them, is the order
which ought to exist?

Who has led them into this amazing delusion?

They can never have persuaded themselves that they ought to do
what is against their conscience, and also the source of misery
and ruin for themselves, and all their class, who make up nine-
tenths of the population.

"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment:
'Thou shalt not kill'?" I have often inquired of different
soldiers. And I always drove them to embarrassment and confusion
by reminding them of what they did not want to think about. They
knew they were bound by the law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and
knew too that they were bound by their duty as soldiers, but had
never reflected on the contradiction between these duties. The
drift of the timid answers I received to this question was always
approximately this: that killing in war and executing criminals by
command of the government are not included in the general
prohibition of murder. But when I said this distinction was not
made in the law of God, and reminded them of the Christian duty of
fraternity, forgiveness of injuries, and love, which could not be
reconciled with murder, the peasants usually agreed, but in their
turn began to ask me questions. "How does it happen," they
inquired, "that the government [which according to their ideas
cannot do wrong] sends the army to war and orders criminals to be
executed." When I answered that the government does wrong in
giving such orders, the peasants fell into still greater
confusion, and either broke off the conversation or else got angry
with me.

"They must have found a law for it. The archbishops know as much
about it as we do, I should hope," a Russian soldier once observed
to me. And in saying this the soldier obviously set his mind at
rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a
law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their
descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing
himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or
conundrum on my part.

Everyone in our Christian society knows, either by tradition or by
revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one of
the most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel tells us,
and that the sin of murder cannot be limited to certain persons,
that is, murder cannot be a sin for some and not a sin for others.
Everyone knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin,
whoever are the victims murdered, just like the sin of adultery,
theft, or any other. At the same time from their childhood up men
see that murder is not only permitted, but even sanctioned by the
blessing of those whom they are accustomed to regard as their
divinely appointed spiritual guides, and see their secular leaders
with calm assurance organizing murder, proud to wear murderous
arms, and demanding of others in the name of the laws of the
country, and even of God, that they should take part in murder.
Men see that there is some inconsistency here, but not being able
to analyze it, involuntarily assume that this apparent
inconsistency is only the result of their ignorance. The very
grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in
this conviction.

They cannot imagine that the leaders of civilization, the
educated classes, could so confidently preach two such opposed
principles as the law of Christ and murder. A simple uncorrupted
youth cannot imagine that those who stand so high in his opinion,
whom he regards as holy or learned men, could for any object
whatever mislead him so shamefully. But this is just what has
always been and always is done to him. It is done (1) by
instilling, by example and direct instruction, from childhood up,
into the working people, who have not time to study moral and
religious questions for themselves, the idea that torture and
murder are compatible with Christianity, and that for certain
objects of state, torture and murder are not only admissible, but
ought to be employed; and (2) by instilling into certain of the
people, who have either voluntarily enlisted or been taken by
compulsion into the army, the idea that the perpetration of murder
and torture with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a
glorious exploit, worthy of praise and reward.

The general delusion is diffused among all people by means of the
catechisms or books, which nowadays replace them, in use for the
compulsory education of children. In them it is stated that
violence, that is, imprisonment and execution, as well as murder
in civil or foreign war in the defense and maintenance of the
existing state organization (whatever that may be, absolute or
limited monarchy, convention, consulate, empire of this or that
Napoleon or Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, commune or
republic) is absolutely lawful and not opposed to morality and
Christianity.

This is stated in all catechisms or books used in schools. And
men are so thoroughly persuaded of it that they grow up, live and
die in that conviction without once entertaining a doubt about it.

This is one form of deception, the general deception instilled
into everyone, but there is another special deception practiced
upon the soldiers or police who are picked out by one means or
another to do the torturing and murdering necessary to defend and
maintain the existing REGIME.

In all military instructions there appears in one form or another
what is expressed in the Russian military code in the following
words:

ARTICLE 87. To carry out exactly and without comment the orders
of a superior officer means: to carry out an order received from a
superior officer exactly without considering whether it is good or
not, and whether it is possible to carry it out. The superior
officer is responsible for the consequences of the order he gives.

ARTICLE 88. The subordinate ought never to refuse to carry out
the orders of a superior officer except when he sees clearly that
in carrying out his superior officer's command, he breaks [the law
of God, one involuntarily expects; not at all] HIS OATH OF
FIDELITY AND ALLEGIANCE TO THE TZAR.

It is here said that the man who is a soldier can and ought to
carry out all the orders of his superior without exception. And
as these orders for the most part involve murder, it follows that
he ought to break all the laws of God and man. The one law he may
not break is that of fidelity and allegiance to the man who
happens at a given moment to be in power.

Precisely the same thing is said in other words in all codes of
military instruction. And it could not be otherwise, since the
whole power of the army and the state is based in reality on this
delusive emancipation of men from their duty to God and their
conscience, and the substitution of duty to their superior officer
for all other duties.

This, then, is the foundation of the belief of the lower classes
that the existing REGIME so fatal for them is the REGIME which
ought to exist, and which they ought therefore to support even by
torture and murder.

This belief is founded on a conscious deception practiced on them
by the higher classes.

And it cannot be otherwise. To compel the lower classes, which
are more numerous, to oppress and ill treat themselves, even at
the cost of actions opposed to their conscience, it was necessary
to deceive them. And it has been done accordingly.

Not many days ago I saw once more this shameless deception being
openly practiced, and once more I marveled that it could be
practiced so easily and impudently.

At the beginning of November, as I was passing through Toula, I
saw once again at the gates of the Zemsky Courthouse the crowd of
peasants I had so often seen before, and heard the drunken shouts
of the men mingled with the pitiful lamentations of their wives
and mothers. It was the recruiting session.

I can never pass by the spectacle. It attracts me by a kind of
fascination of repulsion. I again went into the crowd, took my
stand among the peasants, looked about and asked questions. And
once again I was amazed that this hideous crime can be perpetrated
so easily in broad daylight and in the midst of a large town.

As the custom is every year, in all the villages and hamlets of
the one hundred millions of Russians, on the 1st of November, the
village elders had assembled the young men inscribed on the lists,
often their own sons among them, and had brought them to the town.

On the road the recruits have been drinking without intermission,
unchecked by the elders, who feel that going on such an insane
errand, abandoning their wives and mothers and renouncing all they
hold sacred in order to become a senseless instrument of
destruction, would be too agonizing if they were not stupefied
with spirits.

And so they have come, drinking, swearing, singing, fighting and
scuffling with one another. They have spent the night in taverns.
In the morning they have slept off their drunkenness and have
gathered together at the Zemsky Court-house.

Some of them, in new sheepskin pelisses, with knitted scarves
round their necks, their eyes swollen from drinking, are shouting
wildly to one another to show their courage; others, crowded near
the door, are quietly and mournfully waiting their turn, between
their weeping wives and mothers (I had chanced upon the day of the
actual enrolling, that is, the examination of those whose names
are on the list); others meantime were crowding into the hall of
the recruiting office.

Inside the office the work was going on rapidly. The door is
opened and the guard calls Piotr Sidorov. Piotr Sidorov starts,
crosses himself, and goes into a little room with a glass door,
where the conscripts undress. A comrade of Piotr Sidorov's, who
has just been passed for service, and come naked out of the
revision office, is dressing hurriedly, his teeth chattering.
Sidorov has already heard the news, and can see from his face too
that he has been taken. He wants to ask him questions, but they
hurry him and tell him to make haste and undress. He throws off
his pelisse, slips his boots off his feet, takes off his waistcoat
and draws his shirt over his head, and naked, trembling all over,
and exhaling an odor of tobacco, spirits, and sweat, goes into the
revision office, not knowing what to do with his brawny bare arms.

Directly facing him in the revision office hangs in a great gold
frame a portrait of the Tzar in full uniform with decorations, and
in the corner a little portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown
of thorns. In the middle of the room is a table covered with
green cloth, on which there are papers lying and a three-cornered
ornament surmounted by an eagle-- the zertzal. Round the table are
sitting the revising officers, looking collected and indifferent.
One is smoking a cigarette; another is looking through some
papers. Directly Sidorov comes in, a guard goes up to him, places
him under the measuring frame, raising him under his chin, and
straightening his legs.

The man with the cigarette--he is the doctor--comes up, and
without looking at the recruit's face, but somewhere beyond it,
feels his body over with an air of disgust, measures him, tests
him, tells the guard to open his mouth, tells him to breathe, to
speak. Someone notes something down. At last without having once
looked him in the face the doctor says, "Right. Next one!" and
with a weary air sits down again at the table. The soldiers again
hustle and hurry the lad. He somehow gets into his trousers,
wraps his feet in rags, puts on his boots, looks for his scarf and
cap, and bundles his pelisse under his arm. Then they lead him
into the main hall, shutting him off apart from the rest by a
bench, behind which all the conscripts who have been passed for
service are waiting. Another village lad like himself, but from a
distant province, now a soldier armed with a gun with a sharp-
pointed bayonet at the end, keeps watch over him, ready to run him
through the body if he should think of trying to escape.

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